


The Night Before

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 04:52:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirkwall is on the precipice of war. Two of its major players are on the precipice of revelation. For a night, all's fair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Before

When she beckoned at him to come to her, to unbuckle the hard-to-reach fastenings on her heavy armour and carefully drape the pieces on the mannequin and racks at the far end of the bedroom, he trembled with excitement.  
Only he knew what was hidden under the gleaming mail and ringing steel. Only he knew, because he had been the one to lace it up that morning.

With practiced ease he removed each piece of armour, deconstructing the knight-commander and revealing the woman underneath, the woman that was his just as much as he was hers, who watched his fingers move with a hunger he doubted she was aware of.  
During the day, Meredith had shifted irritably in her chair, the satin of the undergarments making her painfully aware of her body, reminding her at every turn that with every passing hour, the night grew closer — but not yet close enough, not yet.

Across the hall, Orsino had let his mind drift, only to come to himself fifteen minutes later with half-finished paperwork and a tent in his robes.  
It was torture for both of them. Just the way they preferred it.

They both imagined themselves rabid and frothing at the mouth when they finally got their hands on each other, barely able to restrain themselves from tearing their garments asunder, but they are remarkably composed as Orsino undresses her, draping the mail coat over the mannequin and slipping off the final layer — thin but tough linen shirt and trousers, to protect her white flesh from the steel.

They are remarkably composed as he comes up behind her, drifting his fingers over the pronounced curve of her torso that the corset creates, drifting up over the top of it to trace the hollow of her spine and slip under the weight of her hair, curving his hands around her shoulders and pressing his thumbs to the place just under the nape of her neck. She does not object, does not hiss at him to focus, and he draws closer until the front of him is flush with the back of her, his outer robe removed but the inner one still keeping his flesh away from hers.  
He brings his hands down again, to her waist, and her hands close around them to draw them up to her breasts. She bows her head, hair falling forward, and he presses his lips ever so gently to the curve of her shoulder.

“Did you think of me?” she asks, her husky voice barely heard over the thudding of Orsino’s heart in his temples.

“I scarcely did anything else,” he answers honestly, and she turns in his arms to face him.

“That won’t do,” she chides, but he senses no real admonition in her tone. She regards him with eyes that do not cut, with a half-smile that holds no sadist’s quirk, and though she does not yet embrace him — she is always slow to do so — she does not stiffen or tug away impatiently from his hands as they smooth her hair from her face.

His heart slows a beat, anxiety creeping up to coil around it and squeeze. There is… something wrong here.  
“Unlace me,” she murmurs, and he forgets this sense of foreboding as he busies himself with the Orlesian garment’s lacing.

She draws him down to the bed with her when he's finished, pushing the robe off his shoulders and taking him in hand. The contact surprises him into inaction, and he freezes with his hands planted in the mattress on either side of her shoulders, eyes flaring wide before fluttering closed.  
Most nights, she wanted his tongue, his fingers, insisting that he drive her to the brink again and again while he desperately ground his hips into the bedsheets.  
Again, that flare of anxiety — this was not most nights.

“Orsino…” she admonishes softly, and he focuses on her steady gaze and, below it, the body that waits for him.

They are silent and absorbed, Orsino intoxicated by the heady scent and yielding softness of her flesh, Meredith entranced by the thrum of mana under his skin and the smooth thrust and roll of his hips. She locks her ankles behind his and presses their centres together, heat pulsing between them and causing Orsino to melt into her, writhing restlessly, tension building and building until she releases him and he immediately withdraws just enough to thrust in again, thinking he would swoon from the rush of pleasure.

She toys with him like this for minutes — pushing her hips upward to meet him, again and again, and then lying perfectly still for a few thrusts until suddenly grinding against him; raking her nails ever so lightly up his spine and sides and then suddenly digging in and clawing him so his hips jerked and his spine arched, smiling faintly at the hiss and moan this elicited — until her eyes glaze and her entire abdomen feels molten and liquid. When she makes a soft, tense sound and tosses her head, Orsino thrusts in deep and grinds against her, watching her flush and arch towards him, feeling her thighs tremble and her walls clench around him. She gasps as he withdraws with inexorable slowness, looking down the length of their bodies to watch himself slide out inch by inch, his mind already grown hazy with the knowledge of impending release.  
Neither of them is surprised when his last thrust brings them both, Orsino cutting off a broken cry behind clenched teeth and Meredith tensing up tight before clutching at him and trying to scramble away from him at the same time. She lets him sag onto her, trembling and panting, her arms too weak to embrace him and her mind too weak to process anything except remembering how to breathe normally.

They are too exhausted to speak, Orsino drifting off as soon as he rolls off her and Meredith barely able to pull the bedsheets over them before she, too, falls into slumber.

Perhaps if they’d stayed awake, they would have talked about what plagued Meredith’s mind — the ever-strong song of red lyrium and the cracking she felt deep within her brain, the death’s-scythe shadow she saw over the Chantry when she dreamed, and the burning sensation she felt in these dreams, oh, the burning. And perhaps Orsino would have mentioned that he felt the burning, too, except it was deep within him, and he'd _welcomed_ it, and he wakes up thinking he’s died or worse — possibly worse, considering the bleakness that comes with waking is so crushing he cannot move for minutes.

Perhaps it is a good thing they did not speak at all, and simply slept with each other’s scent embedded in their skin and the invisible red strings that bound them still holding fast, and Kirkwall around them dark and starless, coiled up tight like a drawn bow string.


End file.
